The people that did StarTrek Voyager use Lightwave and I believe that the Final Fantasy movie was done in Maya. If its good enough for them, its good enough for me! ;) If I was spending 10k I would probably go for Maya at about 3k and spend the rest on lessons ;) Alternatively, you can get those fancy 3D scanners, so you don't need to model... but I think they start at about 11k and go 40k+ :(